A Street Cat Named Bob

I hadn’t got many decisions right in my life. Whenever I’d been given an opportunity in the past ten years I’d screwed things up big time. Within a couple of days of deciding to become a Big Issue seller, however, I was pretty sure that I’d taken a step in the right direction for once.

It had an immediate impact on life for me and Bob. For a start it gave us more structure. I effectively had a Monday to Friday job, well, a Monday to Saturday one, in fact.

For those first two weeks, Bob and I worked at Covent Garden from Monday to Saturday, which tied in with the publication of the magazine. The new edition would come out each Monday morning.

We’d be there from sometime in the middle of the morning, and often finish at the end of the early evening rush hour, which was around 7p.m. We stayed for as long as it took us to sell a batch of papers.

Being with Bob had already taught me a lot about responsibility but the Big Issue took that to another level. If I wasn’t responsible and organised I didn’t earn money. And if I didn’t earn money Bob and I didn’t eat. So from that very first fortnight, I had to grasp how to run my Big Issue pitch as a business.

For someone whose life had been completely disorganised for the best part of ten years, this was a huge leap. I’d never been great with money, and had to live from hand to mouth. I surprised myself with the way I adapted to the new demands.

There were downsides, of course, there were bound to be. There is no sale or return with the Big Issue so I learned quickly that if you miscalculated the amount of magazines, you could lose out quite badly. You can take a serious blow if you are stuck with fifty papers on Saturday night. Come Monday, you get no credit against the next purchase from the old magazines, so the old papers are pulp. At the same time, you didn’t want to under buy. Too few and you’d sell out too quickly and miss out on willing buyers. It was no different from running Marks and Spencer’s – well, in theory.

The other thing you had to factor in was that there was a huge difference in the quality of the magazines from week to week. Some weeks it would be a good issue packed with interesting stuff. Other weeks it would be quite dull and really hard to sell, especially if the cover didn’t have some famous film or rock star on it. It could be a bit unfair.

It took a while to get the balance right.

While I was working out the best way to sell the Big Issue, I still lived from hand to mouth. What I earned between Monday and Saturday evening was generally gone by Monday morning. Sometimes at the start of each week I’d turn up at the coordinator’s stand with only a few quid. If Sam was there I’d ask her to do me a favour and buy ten papers for me on the understanding I’d pay her back as soon as I had some money. She would usually do this for vendors who she knew she could trust to repay her and I had done this once or twice before when I was desperate and always repaid her within hours. I knew the money was coming out of her pocket, not the Big Issue’s, so it was only fair.

Then when I had sold those copies I’d go back and pay off what I owed and get some more papers. I’d build it up that way from there.

As a result of this, in real terms, I was actually making less money than I had been busking with Bob. But as I settled down into this new routine, I decided it was a price worth paying. The fact that I was working legitimately on the streets made a huge difference to me. If I got stopped by a policeman, I could produce my badge and be left in peace. After the experience with the Transport Police that meant a lot.

The next couple of months working at the tube station flew by. In many ways it was similar to busking. We’d attract the same sort of people: a lot of middle-aged and elderly ladies, groups of female students, gay guys but also people from all walks of life.

One day during the early part of the autumn of 2008 we were approached by a very flamboyant-looking guy. He had bleached-blond hair and was wearing jeans, cowboy boots and I could tell that the leather jacket and jeans must have cost a fortune. I was sure he was an American rock star; he certainly looked like one.

As he’d walked along, he had immediately spotted Bob. He stopped in his tracks and smiled.

‘That’s one cool cat,’ he said, in a sort of transatlantic drawl.

He looked really familiar but I couldn’t for the life of me place him. I was dying to ask him who he was, but thought it was rude. I was glad I didn’t.

He spent a minute on his knees just stroking Bob.

‘You guys been together long?’ he asked.

‘Uhhmm, gosh, let me think,’ I said, having to work it out. ‘Well we got together in the spring of last year, so it’s about a year and a half now.’

‘Cool. You look like real soul brothers,’ he smiled. ‘Like you belong together.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, by now desperate to know who the hell this guy was.

Before I could ask him he got up and looked at his watch.